I want to encourage every member of this chapter to work harder to participate in the other part of the Field Herp Forum group, the NAHERP database project. So far our level of participation sucks. Of the three states in this chapter, Oregon has the rest of us beat with 290 records as of today. We in Washington have a piddly 166. Most of those WA records are by two herpers. There are many counties in OR, WA and ID that have zero herp records showing in the database. Come on guys, let's do it.

Idaho looks even worse with 13 records for the entire state.

Let's get going. It's easy and fun to input data knowing you are helping science. The locales (if you choose to input them) are only released to vetted scientists after putting their detailed requests and CVs out to the members of Field Herp Forum.

I am hoping to get a bunch more entered by mid-summer (if we ever get a summer). I've got a gob of them already that need entering. Going to the upper Columbia near the Canadian border this weekend, hopefully we can turn some stuff up.

well, I have a lot I haven't put in over the last year and a half, but I will do it when i have some down time. I know a few other herpers haven't put anything in that need to but I can't preach until I get back into it myself.

Every one?Probably not.I stop entering Sceloporus and Contia and Pseudacris once I have documented their presence at a specific locale several times in a given year. I still enter a hell of a lot of them though.

I won't keep harping on this but wanted to give my best shot at promoting the idea...with excerpts from NAHERP's about page.

The premise of NAFHA and its NAHERP database is to unite North American herpers with the purpose of collecting quality field data on the distribution and ecology of North American reptiles and amphibians. Here is a recent data request showing what kind of detail a data requester must provide. (you may be required to be logged in to the NAHERP site to view this and the following links) http://www.naherp.com/user/view-data-re ... hp?dr_id=2 The request is then approved or not by vote by you and me.

Data entered into the (HERP) database, and through the NAFHA forums, can be useful to biologists, state and federal agencies, authors, and other interested parties who may request field data from NAFHA members. Queries are voted upon by the members and data may or may not be released, depending on the vote.

Over 500 forum users are inputting data into NAHERP with a total of nearly 47,000 entries since 2006. Field Herp Forum users (that would be you) are no doubt the most active herpers in North America. Together they also possess the most knowledge regarding distribution, habitat, habits, etc, more than any biologist , university prof or other entity. So I say why not participate and enhance the recorded knowledge about the animals we love. Our data will be used by field guide writers, among others.

Guys that you all know like, for example, Brian Hubbs with 140+ and Fundad with 300+ entries since April are among the leading contributors of data.

I have entered a fair amount of records, I'm not talking poop, I have read most of the stuff on NAFHA. I just wonder who uses this info?

These are the three data requests made so far:

California ARSSC did a data request last year to assist in their determination of California's sensitive species list. They requested data on 15 species in California that they felt they needed more data on in order to determine whether or not those species should be designated as sensitive, and we were able to provide about 400 records for those 15 species. http://www.nafha.org/california-chapter ... rnia-arssc

Bucks County Herpetology Inventory did a data request this February for all herp records in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in order to help build current and trending data on their herp inventory, especially those species with spotty distributions. http://www.naherp.com/user/view-data-re ... hp?dr_id=2

The Texas Natural Diversity Database just did a data request for the species they track in order to help determine the status, trend, and conservation need for those species, and also to help evaluate development projects for their potential environmental impact. http://www.naherp.com/user/view-data-re ... hp?dr_id=3

Of course, the database is still young - it is still not quite 4 years old, and almost 40% of the vouchered records in the database were just added in the last 6 months. As more records get added and word about the database continues to spread, I think that it is likely that data requests will increase substantially.

Remember - other than the rare case in which Don has to fix an error, no one can look at the locality data (or any other publicly hidden data) unless a data request is made and approved by the membership.

That's exactly what I was looking for. Cold hard use of the database to give me a reason to spend hours entering Data. Thank you Jonathan.

Nate

jonathan wrote:

Indafield wrote:

I have entered a fair amount of records, I'm not talking poop, I have read most of the stuff on NAFHA. I just wonder who uses this info?

These are the three data requests made so far:

California ARSSC did a data request last year to assist in their determination of California's sensitive species list. They requested data on 15 species in California that they felt they needed more data on in order to determine whether or not those species should be designated as sensitive, and we were able to provide about 400 records for those 15 species. http://www.nafha.org/california-chapter ... rnia-arssc

Bucks County Herpetology Inventory did a data request this February for all herp records in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in order to help build current and trending data on their herp inventory, especially those species with spotty distributions. http://www.naherp.com/user/view-data-re ... hp?dr_id=2

The Texas Natural Diversity Database just did a data request for the species they track in order to help determine the status, trend, and conservation need for those species, and also to help evaluate development projects for their potential environmental impact. http://www.naherp.com/user/view-data-re ... hp?dr_id=3

Of course, the database is still young - it is still not quite 4 years old, and almost 40% of the vouchered records in the database were just added in the last 6 months. As more records get added and word about the database continues to spread, I think that it is likely that data requests will increase substantially.

Remember - other than the rare case in which Don has to fix an error, no one can look at the locality data (or any other publicly hidden data) unless a data request is made and approved by the membership.

We now have over 650 records, which is still not all that many. Steve Zimmerman went through and entered a bunch, which helped quite a bit, particularly with a bunch of species and counties that we had no records for. David Hardesty entered a gob of them also (nice work). I finally entered a bunch, mostly stuff I found at work over the last two years, and then I went out and got over 75 new records this last weekend (including a couple of tiger salamanders which I haven't seen for years now).

I'll note that there's been 8 or 9 database requests made now, as opposed to the just three when I posted on this thread a little more than a year ago. My own data from the database has been used in the rewrite of the US Forest Service’s “Forest Sensitive Species” list, a USGS project to measure the genetic diversity of southern California's pond turtle populations, and to fill in gaps in the Missouri Herp Atlas.

I am glad to see this topic here. I have seen an increase in nw entries. Great job guys. build it and they will come. Once you get to about 5000 entries, I imagine you'll start to see requests in your neck of the woods. Keep it everyone.

I need to get involved in data entries again... I am ashamed at my participation and I do enough herping to make a dent. I just prefer to do county records and everything I find is in the same places, but I guess that's still important.

My advice (and since this post was first written I've gone from 140 records to over 6,000) is to be consistent. Enter just 10 records a day if you have time constraints, and those 10 will turn into 3,650 by the end of a year. You can do it. People of lesser intelligence have done it, just look at me.

It takes me an average of 30 seconds to enter a record. There are tricks that save a lot of time. This is a GREAT mapping project that is long overdue. We now have over 112,000 records, and Washington has 990 of those. Oregon has 661, but only 43 this year. Hell, I added more than that the day before yesterday. I have more pond turtle records (824) than all the records for Oregon...let's go people...

There have been 32 database requests nationally now, 13 more than when I last updated this in July of last year! The Northwest Chapter still only has one of those requests - for fence lizard records from Oregon and Washington - and there were only 16 data points to submit for that request. Obviously, the more record we get, the more useful our data will be, and the more requests we will get. So far the majority of data requests have been from either California or the Northeast Chapter, which, non-coincidentally, have the majority of the database entries.